The priorities aka politics of each military branch are different.
Canonical example: At Guadalcanal in WW2, the Navy was supposed to land supplies and support the Marines, but when the Japanese Navy showed up, the US Navy weighed anchor and left - with most supplies still aboard. The Marines are still mad about that 75 years later.
In more recent times, the problem is that the Air Force doesn't want to fly low and risk AF pilots - ie. provide CAS. And the F35 is the worst at CAS - high, fast and expensive with no loiter time.
Seriously, the world's second-largest carrier fleet, after the USN, is operated by the USMC, and it's bigger than everyone else's carrier fleet combined. (Speaking as a Brit, this is just crazy stuff.)
True, but it's there quick (compared to the A10, C130 and any helicopter) which counts for a ton. Nobody ever called for air support and didn't need it now.
Having dedicated CAS aircraft is nice and it's probably wise to keep something of that nature in service at all time but it's foolish to pretend that a modern multirole fighter can't be shoehorned into that role with reasonable effectiveness.
Edit: You people (you know who you are) seem hellbent on interpreting what I have to say as being a much stronger statement than I am making. I am saying that aircraft like the F35 can do the job and that there are some pros to having those kind of aircraft do the job (namely speed). I am not saying they are better than a purpose built aircraft.
I would say it is foolish to make such a broad generalization like that a plane being new and designated multirole is enough for it to fill all CAS roles (there's more than 1 type of CAS mission) "with reasonable effectiveness". In the case of F-35 replacing A-10, we know that it won't be able to fill some of those roles.
The US has air dominance in Afghanistan, so even a Stuka would look good.
And the F35 has such a small production run that the Air Force would run out in months. Which they won't do for another agency for CAS.
In Vietnam we learned that having airplanes in-theater are much, much cheaper to operate than carrier and remote-based aircraft that take multiple refuelings to arrive on target.
For those not familiar with high-performance figher/bomber jets, they have to be refueled immediately after carrier launch and typically at least one more time after that before a bombing run. It's ridiculous, and exposes the tankers to risk.
USAF had air dominance in all recent wars, and A10s suffered the highest losses. Going against an enemy with functioning air force and air defence with those would be unwise.
But the easy one is: there are 490 F-35s built, with the next 3 lots buying almost that amount more, for less than it'd cost to buy F-16s/-18s. It's not a small production run.
The A-10 is a death trap in a modern air defense environment. The USAF hasn't gone against one of those since Kosovo, and even back then it was all high-altitude fast movers and stealth aircraft dropping ordinance because of the threat of Serbian AD.
What the A-10 is perfect for is counter-insurgency, which is pretty much all the shooting action the US has seen since Kosovo. There's an argument to be made that, considering US engagements, a dedicated COIN aircraft is a good thing to have in the US inventory. It's a niche, though, and the US military is currently resistant to fielding niche systems.
Unfortunately, they're largely too cheap and not sexy enough for the US to field.
That is true but what is also true is that using expensive aircraft designed for near-peer conflicts for that mission burns through airframe hours at an unsustainable rate.
If you know in advance where you're going to need the extra firepower (i.e. "we're gonna take that village over there") then you set up artillery. It's accurate gets where you need it quick, is cheap and can't be shot down en-route.
If you are fighting a war of occupation and patrolling basically everywhere and don't know where you'll run into a fight then you need some way of getting your extra firepower to the ground units that need it. This is traditionally handled by fixed and rotary wind aircraft carrying bombs or air to ground missiles. I'm unaware of surface to surface missiles being used in this role.
The difference between IDF and direct fire is mostly to reduce collateral damage. Direct fire can be more accurate and limit damage to surrounding areas. It is also easier to hit moving targets with direct fire.
Ground troops have a hard time lasing a target they can't see due to being pinned down in a ditch by a machine gun.
But a human brain in the cockpit of a reusable munitions-delivery vehicle is probably cheaper and more resilient.
I'm not even an amateur pacific theater historian, but I know that this story is more nuanced than that, and your implication that the Navy didn't cooperate sounds naive.
It's true that the US armed forces suffer from high division. My canonical example is the retirement of A-10 in favor of F-35.
When I read history, I try to imagine it with at least 3 points of view - the individual soldier, the commander, and the whole conflict.
It is possible to take someone's lived experience seriously while still realizing that they don't have all the answers and they have biases.
We are largely the stories we tell ourselves. One of the stories that Marines tell is that they hold fast where others retreat. Semper Fidelis. I can hold a nuanced view and still understand their viewpoint.
(I am not a Marine, but I did just read Lewis (Chesty) B Puller's biography)
That's excellent advice for almost any encounter in day to day life, including tech support. Something that the people I work with love is that if they say there is a problem, I believe there is a problem. It might not be specifically what they said, or what they said might be impossible, but if you can picture their point of view, their knowledge, and try to imagine a situation that would look like what they described you can often dive directly to the problem.
It has become so limited in the CAS role due to poor survivability that we can't deploy it for most CAS missions. And for the environments where it can survive, the US has many other platforms that will work for CAS in the absence of effective air defense. The A-10 was designed for a very different battlefield that increasingly no longer exists.
Also specific to the Marines is the idea of delivering a fully-operational fighting force anywhere in the world in a short time: infantry, armor, artillery, CAS. Marines even have their own specops (Recon). So while the Marines rely on the Navy for transport (the Marines are a part of the Navy, after all) their land warfare doctrine calls for combined arms. Can't have CAS if the wingwipers are busy doing top-cover 100 miles out from your beach assault.
Air Force is general flight missions. They tend towards support and recon.
Navy is focused on carrier support and sea missions.
Marines are focused on CAS and both land and sea missions. Lot of helicopters as well.
So each branch takes different responsibilities. I don't think this is an issue of Marines not being good enough to fly, as there are very talented Marine pilots around the world. Instead, these Marines weren't being given the resources and training they needed, and were being ignored by the higher chain. The argument that Marines don't take things as seriously is a little ridiculous.
To me this says that the Marines high enough to make decisions do indeed not take things seriously enough.
Specialization is inevitable in an organization as large and complicated as the US military, and it's worth considering whether the service level split is the better way to manage it, especially at the top where it would be better for the decision makers to have diversified experience than to be in-fighting.
Maybe I'm naive, but I always thought it was a nice way of approaching the rest of the world. In reality, the most effective militaries in history have been the ones where everyone can fight.
Logistics win or lose wars. The support is the most important part. Arguably the people "fighting" wars (or at least vulnerable to incoming fire) should be reduced to as close to zero as possible, replaced by drones of various sorts.
Strategic bombing has never recognised this distinction, anyway. Both sides in WW2 spent extensive effort bombing each other's supply lines and factories. The 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, the notorious Benghazi incident, etc: does that count as "fighting"? Most of the US wars since WW2 have been lost during the occupation phase due to the difficulties of COIN. There's no glamour of "fighting" there, it consists of spending years going to work in an office but never forgetting to check under your car.
> Things like supply ships, bases, hospital ships, aircraft carriers, merchant marine, peace corps, etc all go to providing aid in peacetime and supporting the military in times of war.
There is no such thing as peacetime for the United States. https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-...
Edit: while I was writing this comment, protestors have stormed the US embassy in Baghdad. Do the embassy staff count as "fighting"?
Isn't it already less than 10% for most militaries?
Stormin’ Norman once said that logistics is not the army’s tail, but its spine.
Another thing to consider is that supply lines are a target too; in recent conflicts logistics soldiers have very much been at the sharp end.